I have just about had it with Apple's planned obsolescence policy. I bought my Mac, which I have for the most part enjoyed immensely, three years ago. It had OSX 10.3.9 installed and I have followed all upgrade paths short of shelling them out another $129 every year for Leopard, Panther, and Cthulu.

Oh, haven't you heard of Cthulu? It's the next Apple operating system. This one has an automatic draft to your checking account and sucks out $129 annually or else it makes your Mac completely incompatible with all software, Apple or otherwise.

I've noticed that Apple's download page has become increasingly useless as program after program state OS requirements of 10.4 (can't run it) and later incarnations (can't run them either). Further, I found out today that off-the-shelf TurboTax won't even run on 10.3.9! TuboTax of all things! What on earth is needed in TurboTax that requires a fully upgraded Mac to run it?

We called Apple to complain and we were told to send a letter to Steve Jobs! What has gone wrong with this company? I have been pleased with their hardware development, but this purposeful attempt to squeeze money out of my wallet is just plain disgusting. And of course MicroSoft is the evil empire, so I'm now thinking about going with Ubuntu as my next operating system. I can get better hardware for half the price and I won't have an Apple-shaped leach sucking the blood out of my arm anymore._________________"Let's make noise for peace." - Kijjaz

Well, ranting aside, I must say that I'm 95% happy with my Mac overall. It's just this apparent planned obsolescence that has been getting on my nerves for a while. My sister got an iPod for Christmas and she couldn't put music from my mom's Mac into her iPod because of this planned obsolescence, and the music is purchased from CDs. If she had gotten a non-apple product, she probably could have enjoyed the music.

In the past, manufacturers have made great effort to incorporate backward compatibility into their products, but apparently Apple has decided that if your Mac is more than two or three years old, it's obsolete. My car is 20 years old and it's not obsolete. Nor are my old TV's or my Ms. PacMan arcade game from 1981.

And what of my music? I have $500 worth of iTunes downloads and there is no mac-approved way (that I know of) to put this music on a new Mac should I purchase one. OK, maybe I am still ranting a little bit, I'll go back to guitar/amp/accessory shopping and see if that cheers me up some more!_________________"Let's make noise for peace." - Kijjaz

And what of my music? I have $500 worth of iTunes downloads and there is no mac-approved way (that I know of) to put this music on a new Mac should I purchase one. OK, maybe I am still ranting a little bit, I'll go back to guitar/amp/accessory shopping and see if that cheers me up some more!

I have no idea about how this works. I have never bought anything from the iTunes Music Store. I tend to like CDs. I reckon you´ll have to authorize your mac with the ITMS or something? And you can transfer this between machines.._________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

In the past, manufacturers have made great effort to incorporate backward compatibility into their products, but apparently Apple has decided that if your Mac is more than two or three years old, it's obsolete. My car is 20 years old and it's not obsolete. Nor are my old TV's or my Ms. PacMan arcade game from 1981.

Actually you'll find that this happened for good reason. It's all about recycling, profit and (eventually) building better products. I recommend that you read up about DFMA on the Boothroyd Dewhurst website;

BTW, your Mac isn't obsolete after 3 years- they still work don't they?

Well, yes, it's true that all the original software and everything I've installed still works. But I can't use much of the newer software unless I upgrade the OS for $129. TurboTax won't work anymore. Most of the software indexed on Apple's Downloads page won't work anymore. My sister's iPod won't work.

I would call a software upgrade "progress" if its creators at least made some effort toward backward compatibility. It's just that I'm slowly watching this machine become increasingly incompatible with new software and hardware including Apple's stuff. Is it progress that a brand-new iPod won't talk to a 3-year-old Mac?

I get the feeling that Apple, in it's zeal to offer the very latest features and optimize profits, has been encouraging software companies to issue even the simplest software with a 10.4.0 base requirement. I mean, TurboTax won't run on a 3-year-old Mac? Didn't TurboTax run just fine on Windows 3.1 back in the day? I can't imagine that TurboTax requires fancy dashboard features or this Time Machine or something else to run properly.

Oops, I'm ranting again. I appreciate your perspective, v-un-v, and perhaps time will temper my frustration, its just that the situation seems wrong to me somehow._________________"Let's make noise for peace." - Kijjaz

I'm sure it's not Apple's fault. And I'm sure it's got nothing to do with profit, or shareholder dividends, elitist politics, or a "head in the sand" mentality. In fact it's probably got nothing to do with reality at all. _________________What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.

I'm sure it's not Apple's fault. And I'm sure it's got nothing to do with profit, or shareholder dividends, elitist politics, or a "head in the sand" mentality. In fact it's probably got nothing to do with reality at all.

don't feed the troll

Andy, sometimes your ignorance really pisses me off. Quite the contrary. It has everything to do with reality! DRM (the unfortunate reality) is the product of heavy handed organisations like the RIAA making everybody's life a misery when it comes to selling music. These companies started to panic when downloading began, and then the usual flies came to circle the shit, to make more money off that. Apple had no choice, unless they wanted to go open source and therefore uncompetitive. If anybody is really to blame, then it is all those anti-piracy, anti-sampling do-gooders from, yup, Microsoft et al (fuelled, dare I say it, from people on internet forums for the last several years!).

As for the Mac, the Mac is a product- and a PC is a computer. The problem with the Apple Mac, is that the Mac is a product posing as a computer- a very good one in fact.

If you don't like the whole Mac thing, then yes, get a PC. And if you really don't like Microsoft, get Linux.

FWIW, I use all three. XP is a good OS. Not brilliant, but good. OS X imo is brilliant, but you have to pay for it, as a 'product', because that's the way Apple's marketing have chosen to go. Linux is very good too. Problem is though is that very little industry standard software apps exists for it (although that has been changing a little).

It's as simple as that.

FWIW, There is software out there that allows you to run the latest builds of OS X on older machines (do a search at Versiontracker). Also, although it is breaking the EULA agreement, you can quite easily install OS X from an existing "off-the-shelf" Leopard disk on any Mac and as many times as you like (you are breaking the law- but you can do it). OTOH, try doing that with a copy of Windows XP! _________________ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.

I really hope you didn´t type that other post from that iPod Touch. _________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

TurboTax won't run on a 3-year-old Mac? Didn't TurboTax run just fine on Windows 3.1 back in the day? I can't imagine that TurboTax requires fancy dashboard features or this Time Machine or something else to run properly.

This is got to be a wind up?

TurboTax? What the @£$! is TurboTax??

I think you'll find that the reason turbotax works so well in W3.1, is because it was initially written for W3.1 and NOT Mac OS! The next reason Turbotax don't work with Mac, is because tt is one of the hundreds of shit ports written by one of the hundreds of companies who though they would patronise the Mac OS market (in order to increase profitability) with an equally shite port of their awful software. I'm afraid my friend, that the REAL answer in why this piece of crap programming doesn't work with a 3 year old Macintosh lies with the developer who wrote the port, NOT with Apple. A decent application written in Cocoa/ Objective C+ will work from day one in ANY version of Mac OS X and on ANY Mac running OS X.

Oh Tom!
You really are so predictable sometimes!
I was just checking to see if you were still on the ball!

BTW, I agree, if a new OS means your fav software stops working, use the old OS. Or, look around, there's usually someone out there who has worked out a way of "degrading" the new OS to the old standards. It happens with Win/PC all the time._________________What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.

I get the feeling that Apple, in it's zeal to offer the very latest features and optimize profits, has been encouraging software companies to issue even the simplest software with a 10.4.0 base requirement.

Did you consider that it might not be a issue of requirements but one of testing? In the Windows world you often see requirements like "XP, SP2" where it will run perfectly without SP2 as well. I think the trick is that they just want to test one platform and for this pick the latest, then list that as a requirement to be safe.

I'm sure Apple would also like you to buy a new computer regularly and I do have a suspicion Tom has a point when he calls the TurboTax people lazy but it needn't be this bad. Why not email the T.T. people and ask if that requirement is really what it needs and why?_________________Kassen

electro-music.com's website is really iPod touch unfriendly. It will be interesting to see any developments in future websites concerning compatibility with iPod Touch/ iPhone interfaces. Mosc....?

I feel EM should write for (open) standards, not for devices. You do have a point that phones and game consoles are increasingly used/able to browse and this should affect web design. These devices tend to use displays at a lower resolution then normal PC's and use a different interface. Fortunately HTML is a standard and degrading gracefully is one of it's aims. Still, as EM is just a database and a interface we could have a separate interface aimed at that kind of device. It does make sense, but not for just the Iphone or just the Wii or just.... Gmail does this as well, so do some of the larger newspaper sites.

Hmmmm, I don't see much of a point in that but if that's what you want... *shrug* It shouldn't be called electro-music though, I feel. EM is supposed to be for everybody. Particularly in the site itself I think we should support open standards and be as inclusive as we possibly can._________________Kassen

Wow, social elitism at it's finest! And people laugh at India because they still have remnants of a caste system! I suppose it starts off with loving a computer...next is the Cherry 2000 robot fulfillment device. Or, will it be the Apple 2000?

Sure, you could see it as elitism and I suppose that's what they want. You could also see it as "hiding in a corner in shame".

Anyway, I think it's a cool idea on second thought. Tom should do it and just give a shout next week or so telling us it's up so we can delete the sections on Apple and OSX here and replace them with links to that site._________________Kassen

Sure, you could see it as elitism and I suppose that's what they want. You could also see it as "hiding in a corner in shame".

Anyway, I think it's a cool idea on second thought. Tom should do it and just give a shout next week or so telling us it's up so we can delete the sections on Apple and OSX here and replace them with links to that site.

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